Elephant Hotel

(Image courtesy of Brooklyn Based)


Each time I venture out to Coney Island in South Brooklyn, I try and appreciate its famous past in the various rundown elements that still exist there today. Sometimes this is hard to do, seeing the place for the first time a century after its heyday. There's always been a mysterious curiosity that accompanied the ideas of what Coney Island was once like. Apparently pretty racy, seeing as the Coney Island Elephant existed. A 122 foot high hotel and brothel in the shape of an elephant was built by James V. Lafferty in 1885. The 31 roomed building which became linked with prostitution was eventually burnt down in a fire 11 years later.